Analog-to-digital converters of the type described by D. F. Hoeschele Jr. in the text entitled ANALOG-TO-DIGITAL/DIGITAL-TO-ANALOG CONVERSION TECHNIQUES, published by Wiley in 1968, are widely used in present day technology to translate sensor measurements of an analog nature into the digital language of computing and data processing for use in information and control systems. In some of these systems, such as the signal processors for wideband radars, for example, performance is inherently limited by the maximum attainable speed of operation of present state of the art wholly electronic analog-to-digital converters.
More recently, the use of electro-optic grating type of light beam deflector for analog-to-digital conversion was reported by S. Wright, I. M. Mason, and M. G. F. Wilson in an article entitled HIGH-SPEED ELECTRO-OPTIC ANALOGUE-DIGITAL CONVERSION, published in Electronics Letters, Vol. 10, pp. 508-509 on Nov. 28, 1974. The grating light beam deflector type of device offers the desirable potential of high speed operation but unfortunately is inherently limited to a maximum precision of only three bits of binary representation.
Accordingly, it is highly desirable that the advantages of the potential high speed capabilities of an electro-optic analog-to-digital converter be realized without inherent limitation as to the number of binary bits of information which can be processed by such a converter.